The East India Company's London workers : management of the warehouse labourers, 1800-1858
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The East India Company's London workers : management of the warehouse labourers, 1800-1858
(Worlds of the East India Company, v. 5)
Boydell, 2010
Available at 7 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-224) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
An assessment of how the East India Company managed the labourers in its London warehouses, which was one of the largest commercial workforces in its day.
The East India Company, which was by 1800 a commercial organisation of unrivalled size and complexity managing a vast empire in Asia, also played a crucial role in the British economy, particularly in London, where the Company wasthe largest employer of civilian labour in the early nineteenth century, with thousands of workmen in its metropolitan warehouses. This book provides a detailed examination of the management strategies used by the Company to control its London warehouse labourers and to maintain acceptable levels of commercial and corporate efficiency. It shows how benevolence formed an integral part of the Company's domestic business practices, with discipline, punishment, regulation and restriction counterbalanced by incentives, rewards and paternalistic practices, such as fair and regular wages, pensions, a comprehensive welfare scheme, free medical treatment and an in-house savings bank. The book also outlines how, when the Charter Act of 1833 brought about the closure of the vast majority of the Company's London warehouses, the directors instigated a pioneering redundancy compensation scheme for the labourers.
MARGARET MAKEPEACE is a Senior Archivist in the India Office Records at the British Library.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The East India Company Warehouses
The Warehouse Labourers
Management Strategies: Incentives, Rewards and Benevolence
Management Strategies: Systems of Internal Control
The Royal East India Volunteers: The 'Union of Civil and Military Dependence'
The Relationship between the East India Company and its London Warehouse Labourers
The Warehouse Closures
Management of the Warehouse Labourers and Pensioners 1838-1858
Conclusion: 'Good Masters to the Lower Class of their Dependents'
by "Nielsen BookData"